Devil’s Lake State Park
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Devil’s Lake State Park is in the Baraboo Hills, just south of Baraboo, and it is the busiest state park in Wisconsin. The lake fills an old river gorge that the last glacier plugged at both ends, and bluffs of pink and purple quartzite rise about 500 feet on either side, their lower slopes buried in talus, the broken blocks that have fallen from the cliffs above. It is one of my favorite places, and I have kayaked there many times over the years, among them August 16, 2014, when I paddled along the foot of the bluffs in a red kayak under a gray sky. In June 2016, I camped at the Ice Age Campground. On May 28, 2022, I walked from the South Shore beach, where a row of kayaks was pulled up on the sand, along the east shore past fields of talus and pillars of rock to the North Shore, where a plaque dedicated in June 2011 marks a hundred years since the park was established in 1911.
Photos from Devil’s Lake State Park
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Out on the lake in a kayak, in August 2014.
Talus and a pillar of quartzite along the east shore.
The plaque on the North Shore from the park’s centennial in 2011.